"The one thing that probably stands out is that we threw 77 pucks roughly to their net, so it wasn't like we weren't trying to throw pucks there, but we need to have a little more net presence," coach Barry Trotz said. "We talk about that all the time. Their goaltender was good and when a goaltender is good and seeing the puck, you've got to make him not see the puck.

"We need a little more traffic, we need second efforts, hunger around the net a little bit more. We're sort of one-and-done type things. ... You've got to just create those second and third efforts around the net, create a little more havoc for them. That's an area that we'll have to get better at."

"We threw a lot of pucks at the net. We could get more bodies in front of the crease," said defenseman Matt Niskanen, who scored Washington's lone goal. "Their goalie was good tonight, but I think he saw too many, more than we would like. We've got to start working that into our game a little bit more. Goalies in this league, if they see shots, they're going to stop them most of the time. We had some whacks at rebounds, guys are going there, but we've got to take away his eyes a little better."

The Capitals, more than most teams, are capable of scoring breathtaking goals, but dull goals count just the same.

"We had a great chance to score goals, but the second opportunity was right there but we didn't put our body in front of the net," forward Alex Ovechkin said. "It was a good lesson [of] what we have to do when we're going to have that kind of opportunities, that kind of chances to score goals."